Environmental theory for everyday people.
Ecognomon is my attempt to share what I’ve learned about environmental theory and philosophy from graduate school and from my own independent reading, because this body of knowledge is beautiful, inspiring, and important, and it deserves to be better known.
The term "ecognomon" is a made up word that came to me on a snowy hike in the woods some years ago. Eco (as in "ecology" and "economics") comes from Greek for home. I wasn't quite sure at the time whether gnomon was a word at all, but figured it must have something to do with knowledge (as in "gnosis" and "gnostic"). When I got home and looked it up, I was delighted to find that gnomon meant, “one who knows or examines,” and that it was also the name for the part of the sundial that casts the shadow and allows you to tell the time. This struck me as rather lovely and apt for what I was trying to do, and it has stuck ever since.
Ecology and environmental science are not consistently taught at the primary and secondary school levels in the way that, say, physics and biology are. This means that most people derive their understanding of the environment from a small subset of ecological concepts that are communicated in other classes, and, increasingly, from news and Internet media. This means that they often do not have a very deep or systematic understanding of the subject. While I cannot single-handedly change our primary and secondary school curricula, I can at least try to provide resources for other teachers and for any enterprising individuals who are looking to educate themselves. My hope is that this will help raise the general level of eco-literacy in American culture.
I think it's safe to say that most people don't have a good sense of what philosophy really is, or how interesting and relevant it could be to their everyday lives. This goes double for the fairly obscure subfield of environmental philosophy. I have a deep love for this field, and I think most people would benefit from giving it some thought, given how intimately connected it is with everything that humans do, and even with our sense of who we are. But how would someone begin to do this unless they had taken college or graduate courses in the field? There are few, if any, roadmaps for those outside of academia. So, I'm aiming to create one: outlines of maj